Mud slinging

You can see why the police, struggling to maintain discipline on the streets, will welcome the Anti-Social Behaviour Order that has been passed on hood-wearing among young people. For a start, hoods aren't particularly fashionable this season, and they run the risk of upsetting ordinary pedestrians who are sensitive to that sort of detail. Second, inflammatory bluster about the effects of aggravated hood-flaunting is simply a way of delaying the moment when law-enforcers will have to address the really urgent work that needs doing with teenagers: bringing in legislation against nasty acrylic ponchos, wiping out the grotesque and disturbing practice of visible thong elastic above trouser waistbands, and taking steps to lower the unacceptably high national figures for navel-revealing tops.

But at the moment they are obsessing over hoods - the allegedly sinister aspect a pulled-up parka can lend to a face, the intimidating subtext inherent in a cotton-jersey hoodie - and, if nothing else, it will be fascinating to know how they are going to enforce restrictions, especially now the nights are drawing in and the wind-chill factor is accelerating. Expect scenes of mayhem in city centres up and down the country, involving swathes of bewildered teenagers apprehended for the heinous crime of having cold ears. Look forward to heated exchanges as anorak-wearing innocents are commanded to drop their hoods and reveal exactly what sort of malicious-minded deviant lurks beneath. Chances are their interrogators will find that serious transgressions such as spotty skin, greasy hair, a variety of suppurating piercings and a terminal sulk are not yet chargeable offences, but surely it can only be a matter of time.

Personally, I approve of hoods. I am all for teenagers covering up as much of their faces as possible - it's only good manners. Besides, shouldn't they be applauded for wearing clothes at all? The poor wretches can't win. Attempt to leave the house in a short skirt, no tights and a boob tube in the dead of winter and parents go apeshit. Wrap up sensibly, on the other hand, with your hood zipped up to the chin to protect against chest colds, and you run the risk of winding up the evening in a police cell. It's a sad day when the wearing of warm clothes marks a person out as a possible suspect - the crimes of mitten abuse and muff-carrying with intent are surely not far off - but then, people are always suspicious of teenagers.

It's a long while since the 1950s when, as a newly identified demographic sub-group, teenagers were intriguing and exciting and unfathomable. Several decades on, the novelty's over. We've got their number. We know their game. A multitude of studies, surveys and research projects have ensured that there is nothing we don't know about how they operate. We have seen inside their heads and we don't like what we've found.

But I, for one, am trying to be tolerant. As a former townie struggling to make the transition from city dweller to card-carrying bumpkin, I feel their pain. "I'm bored. There's nowhere to go. Nothing ever happens round here" is a mantra I trot out quite often. The difference is, I rarely follow up by flouncing out in a raging huff, slamming the door behind me and saying I hate everyone. At night, our village square is full of teenagers who have almost certainly just done one or all of the above, and they congregate to moan and gripe around that universal monument to all teenage angst, the telephone box. If the booth is occupied, they loaf about by the bus stop, or the bins. There seems to be an unspoken agreement that the allotted meeting place must be somewhere ugly, litter-strewn and preferably hewn from graffiti-covered concrete; nowhere, in other words, that speaks of the calming rural beauty that could be theirs if they walked a few hundred yards in the direction of the church.

This is the true horror of being a teenager in the countryside. In the city, it feels absolutely right to be going through personal hell while skulking around hideous precincts and urine-soaked stairwells. Everything is repugnant: you, your life, the world - there is a miserable symbiosis there. Out here in the sticks, the gloriousness of the surroundings serves only to mock and irritate and highlight the fact that your face looks like pizza and no one fancies you.

Another thing that upsets rural teenagers no end is the assumption that they are somehow more wholesome and well-behaved than their urban counterparts. As if to prove their credibility as bona fide hoodlums, there is as much mindless idiocy here as anywhere else, including such stunts as ringing doorbells and running away, snipping off ponies' tails with garden shears, setting wheelie bins on fire and systematically dismantling, brick by brick, over the course of the summer, a hefty flint wall near our house. All perpetrated under cover of darkness, of course; the greatest handicap to country crime is the prohibitive high-visibility factor that comes with living in a small community. Neighbours don't just know you by your car, your milk-ordering habits, your washday routine and your dog, they almost certainly know you by your coat as well. And, as mischief-minded teenagers would do well to remember, that includes the hood.